Explanation: Each August, as planet Earth swings through dust trailing along the orbit of periodic comet Swift-Tuttle, skygazers enjoy the Perseid Meteor Shower. As Earth moves through the denser part of the comet's wide dust trail this year's shower peaks around 6:00 UT August 13 (this morning), when light from a nearly full Moon masks all but the brighter meteor streaks. Still, Perseid meteors can be spotted in the days surrounding the peak. Moonlight and a Perseid meteor created this gorgeous skyscape, recorded in a simple, single, 10 second long exposure on the morning of August 12. Below the moonlit clouds in the foreground are the ruins of a medieval castle near Veszprem, Hungary, seen against the Bakony mountain range. In the night sky above the clouds, the Perseid meteor's trail is joined by bright planet Jupiter near the center of the frame along with the lovely Pleiades star cluster at the left.

<<The Washington Monument was originally intended to be located at the point at which a line running directly south from the center of the White House crossed a line running directly west from the center of the Capitol. Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's 1791 "Plan of the city intended for the permanent seat of t(he) government of the United States ..." designated this point as the location of the equestrian statue of George Washington that the Continental Congress had voted for in 1783. However, the ground at the intended location proved to be too unstable to support a structure as heavy as the planned obelisk. The Jefferson Pier, a small monolith 390 feet WNW of the Monument, now stands at the intended site of the structure.

Excavation for the foundation of the Monument began in early 1848. The cornerstone was laid as part of an elaborate Fourth of July ceremony hosted by the Freemasons, a worldwide fraternal organization to which Washington belonged. Speeches that day showed the country continued to revere Washington. One celebrant noted, "No more Washingtons shall come in our time ... But his virtues are stamped on the heart of mankind. He who is great in the battlefield looks upward to the generalship of Washington. He who grows wise in counsel feels that he is imitating Washington. He who can resign power against the wishes of a people, has in his eye the bright example of Washington."

Construction continued until 1854, when donations ran out. The next year, Congress voted to appropriate $200,000 to continue the work, but rescinded before the money could be spent. This reversal came because of a new policy the society had adopted in 1849. It had agreed, after a request from some Alabamians, to encourage all states and territories to donate commemorative stones that could be fitted into the interior walls. Members of the society believed this practice would make citizens feel they had a part in building the monument, and it would cut costs by limiting the amount of stone that had to be bought. Blocks of Maryland marble, granite and sandstone steadily appeared at the site. American Indian tribes, professional organizations, societies, businesses and foreign nations donated stones that were 4 feet by 2 feet by 12–18 inches. One stone was donated by the Ryukyu Kingdom (Okinawa) and brought back by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, but never arrived in Washington. Many of the stones donated for the monument, however, carried inscriptions which did not commemorate George Washington. For example, one from the Templars of Honor and Temperance stated "We will not buy, sell, or use as a beverage, any spiritous or malt liquors, Wine, Cider, or any other Alcoholic Liquor." It was just one commemorative stone that started the events that stopped the Congressional appropriation and ultimately construction altogether. In the early 1850s, Pope Pius IX contributed a block of marble. In March 1854, members of the anti-Catholic, nativist American Party—better known as the "Know-Nothings"—stole the Pope's stone as a protest and supposedly threw it into the Potomac. Then, in order to make sure the monument fit the definition of "American" at that time, the Know-Nothings conducted an illegal election so they could take over the entire society. Congress immediately rescinded its $200,000 contribution. The Know-Nothings retained control of the society until 1858, adding 13 courses of masonry to the monument—all of which were of such poor quality that they were later removed. Unable to collect enough money to finish work, they increasingly lost public support. The Know-Nothings eventually gave up and returned all records to the original society, but the stoppage in construction continued into, then after, the Civil War.

In 1876 [22 years later], the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence, Congress agreed to appropriate another $200,000 to resume construction. The monument, which had stood for nearly 20 years at less than one-third of its proposed height, now seemed ready for completion.>>

I can see stars through ruins by visiting Detroit or moving to London with the feral humans. By show of hands, who would consider the hand camera as the buggy whip of 21st century astronomy? I get it, ancient man saw the same stars when the ruins were new.

Starswarm Magellan wrote:I can see stars through ruins by visiting Detroit or moving to London with the feral humans. By show of hands, who would consider the hand camera as the buggy whip of 21st century astronomy? I get it, ancient man saw the same stars when the ruins were new.

rstevenson wrote:So roughly how many Perseids hit the space station each year? And what sort of damage do they cause?

None. ISS can probably weather an impact from a small Perseid meteoroid, possibly with significant damage, however. But ISS is shielded more than most space assets. Meteoroid impacts (other than dust-sized) on space satellites are rare, but two or three are suspected to have been lost to impacts during meteor showers.

Interesting. It's hard to imagine a cloud of dust and sand-grain-sized particles, capable of hitting our atmosphere at an average rate of roughly 60 per hour over a few weeks each year (from Wikipedia -- and those are only the ones we can see), which manages to avoid hitting the ISS. Admittedly the ISS is a much smaller target, which I suppose accounts for most of the misses. But none per year?

Perhaps I need to more accurately picture what "cloud" means in this context. Roughly how far apart would, say, the sand-grain-sized bits actually be, on average?

rstevenson wrote:Perhaps I need to more accurately picture what "cloud" means in this context. Roughly how far apart would, say, the sand-grain-sized bits actually be, on average?

Figure a particle flux for major showers to be on the order of one meteoroid per square kilometer per hour at peak (around 20 hours for the Perseids). Some satellites rotate their solar panels during showers to be edge-on to the radiant; I'm not sure if the ISS does this. But in any case, given that the cross sectional area of the ISS is about 0.001 square kilometers, the odds of an impact are pretty low even at the peak flux, and much lower than that on the wings of the peak.